Losing daylight but I’ll try to add the hopper now.
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Experimental idea for the grate. Cutting lengthwise slots in this big tube, maybe 8mm in gap size. If it doesn’t work ill just hack it out and add an expansion zone and a fixed standing rebar grate.
This is very thick stuff and made out of a high quality steel. Was used to hammer install bearings on axles I believe.
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Your stuff is making me junk horny Cody. I remember when I was younger, I had lots of junk.
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Change of plans for the grate, which I’ll have to do tomorrow. Another coupler at the bottom, pipe going in and an elbow pointing down, a grate like how Matt uses in his Ute gasifiers, self standing fixed grate. Well, fixed in the sense it isn’t hanging on anything, it can still rattle around. I need to get as much char bed depth as I can and I’ll be using my 30 gallon barrel for a sack filter so any ash or dust will just go into that double acting drop box filter.
Translation: I goobered it up and am going to plan B.
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Here’s the gas exit, it sits about 3 inches off the very bottom, pointed downwards to force gas to go lower. I’m going to make basically a cage grate, maybe with a solid top for slag to land on and make the exiting gas go a bit further. Imagine a table with a bunch of legs. Like I said in the earlier post I still expect to see a bunch of blowby charcoal, dust and ash but it should be contained by the drop box filter. Gas will be cooled before it’s filtered. Layout of the truck will be the same as the Joni type, only difference is the filter bag will be canvas and the gasifier itself. Still going to make a WK style cooling rail etc. I want the gas to be COLD before it hits my upper intake. Going to place a BBQ thermometer in the center post and one in the filter body so I can get a difference in temps.
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I have just gobs of these solid drum tops that until recently wondered what thread pitch these bungs were. By serendipity they are 2" NPT.
I almost want to leave the reactor body as is, no insulating hearth but I know that won’t end well metallurgically. Charcoal itself can only be so insulating, I just need to be patient for my paycheck and buy sodium silicate and more mortar.
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Just a side note, if you ever get a 14.5" ID 100 pound propane tank, a 15 inch wheel rim will fit very snugly inside. You could almost just silicone seal this and leave it I bet. I don’t have much hopper space if I did this, just over 15 gallons. Not very far!
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Even with a 55 gallon barrel diameter hopper I still only get about 27.79 gallons from the tip of the nozzle to the lid. Will be shaving it very close. Roughly 60 miles per hopper if I reach 2 miles per pound numbers and I sure hope I do.
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This is very frustrating. Even with the right wire, machine cranked all the way down, moving as fast as I can, I’m blowing holes in this barrel material.
Then I try to chase it closed and then the holes get bigger. In anger I’ve hucked this across the yard, done with it. I’ll settle for a small hopper size at this point.
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You need to do it like body panels. Spot welds about every half inch until the whole circumference is done and then grind and run a cover pass.
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second what tom said, stitch weld around jumping often to spread the heat, and hammer close up any gaps that will draw in heats it closes up
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I’ve already ruined what could have been that hopper, I’ll just have to make do. I can always change it later. If I can get at least 25 miles from a hopper I’m golden.
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I’ll use a hot water heater tank bottom to give me a domed lid, and let me get that extra few cups of charcoal. Maybe with damp charcoal I can get longer distances I’m just going off my Mazda numbers.
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I can also change it over to a Mako system and lower the nozzle height, that would give me more hopper space. Using this body as a test bed to figure out which I’ll like the most I guess.
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Hey Cody I had the same problem on my clothes dryer barrel. I burned through in some many places trying to stitch weld. So I mix up some bondo fiber body filler and went over my welds and holes let it dry. Sand it down and it as never cracked or leaked in my charcoal hopper.
I am planning on using that hopper again on my new charcoal double flute build. Why let all that work go to waste. Right.
Bob
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It’s tacked all around, I might just Bondo the rest closed. Or silicone it. I warped the barrel mouth when I tossed the drum like Donkey Kong though so I’ll have to straighten it back up. Right now I just need it to work, I can worry about capacity later.
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Straightening it out bondo the out side and red silicon the inside. Should be good to go. Also when welding old thin metals. Make sure it is
- Clean no paint bare metal.
- Very clean free of grease and oil.
- No rust you can not weld rust.
- Some times I do not follow these rules and I have problems burn hole. Lol.
Bob
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The bigger portion of barrel was brand new, I had cut the top off today and wiped it down with brake cleaner, the lid portion however had some surface rust. Doesn’t help that it’s two different barrels with different ribs. I didn’t want to use any of the barrel material I’m saving for the Joni copy, those will be matching.
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If after I get this up and running and the Svedlund type nozzle isn’t satisfactory, I’m going to patch the 2" hole and weld in couplers for pipe nozzles at a lower spot, and make an air jacket around it.
I got this idea from one of Mike LaRosas old doodles and thought it was a really neat idea. I’m not on my PC so I can’t bring it up but I’ll edit this post to add it in later. He really did the best with what he had.
For initial testing I’m going to run it as a Gragas, no hearth. It should produce useable gas and I’ll drive it around my neighborhood watching my odometer to check fuel efficiency and temps. If temps stay too high at the bottom then I’ll move to the Mako style where I know it will be more of a flat and even burn.
I found from the same eBay seller they have smaller diameter silicon carbide tubes, I’m hoping they match a pipe diameter and can slip them into a pipe. If not then I’d just use sch40 pipes as consumable nozzles.
Unfortunately only 10mm inner diameter so might be too small for this build. I’d be afraid of too high a velocity and it push too much heat to the walls.
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Here’s one of Mike’s doodles, it’s the only one that I have saved.
Pretty interesting that instead of the exterior jacket being a drop box, Mike decided to make it the air entrance. Would definitely never get hot on the outside.
Also noticed he never sealed up the air jackets, I guess it would just smolder until it finally choked out. I think with charcoal it would never really go out, I’d take my chances with wood but not necessarily with charcoal.
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